Soprano Marina Harris is a second-year Adler Fellow. Marina made her debut at San Francisco Opera as Susan Sowerby in the world premiere of The Secret Garden earlier this year and sang multiple roles in the world premiere of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. This season, she has appeared as Elena in Mephistopheles, a maid in Dolores Claiborne, and Berta in The Barber of Seville for Families. Along with her fellow Adlers, Marina will be featured in The Future is Now: The Adler Fellows Gala Concert TONIGHT, November 27, at 7:30 pm at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center. You can also catch Marina one last time as an Adler Fellow performing with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus in their Holiday Concert "SHINE!" on Friday, December 6. Below, Marina answers our questions about her favorite moments as an Adler, what it's like to work on world premieres, and why she's glad to be a West Coast native.

Tomorrow evening our phenomenally talented Adler Fellows will perform in their annual The Future is Now: Adler Gala Concert. Founded in 1977 as the San Francisco Affiliate Artists-Opera Program, Adler Fellowships are performance-oriented residencies for the most advanced young singers and coach/accompanists. Under the guidance of San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley and Opera Center Director Sheri Greenawald, the Adler Fellowship Program offers intensive individual training and roles of increasing importance in San Francisco Opera's main-stage season.

As the year draws to a close for our Adlers, we want to take a moment to highlight some of their key roles in 2013. The Adler Fellows truly are the rising stars of opera, and you can say “You saw them here first!”

On Friday night, during the dress rehearsal for the San Francisco Opera’s production of The Barber of Seville, sixteen preselected audience members broke every cardinal rule of operagoing by pulling out their phones, signing into Twitter, and tweeting non-stop for all three hours of the rehearsal. It was bizarre, it was irreverent, and it was so out of the ordinary that one of the regular audience members actually tweeted us from a few rows in front to let us know he disapproved.

On Saturday, November 9, we hosted our 2nd free Community Open House, featuring fun events and activities for all ages. It's such a joy to open the doors of the beautiful War Memorial Opera House to droves of people who may have never even been inside before. The 2013 Open House included many diverse presentations and opportunities to connect with opera in new ways, including onstage musical demonstrations; sing-alongs with the San Francisco Opera Chorus and San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows; stage combat workshops; costume, wig and makeup demonstrations; a costume photo booth; an opportunity to meet San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley; and family activities throughout the opera house lobbies including a scavenger hunt, prop-making, costume crafts, and more, with workshops designed for both adults and families.

Mezzo-soprano Renée Rapier is a second-year Adler Fellow who made her Company debut in last season's production of Rigoletto. Renée graduated from the University of Northern Iowa, and partcipated in the Merola Opera Program in 2010 and 2011, when she sang Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia. She has won numerous awards, including being a national finalist of the Bel Canto Vocal Scholarship Foundation Competition and a national semifinalist at the Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions in 2011. This season she has appeared in three company productions: as Pantalis in Mephistopheles, a Maid in Dolores Claiborne, and most recently as Meg Page in Falstaff. Here, Renée reflects on working with opera legends, her past life as a violist, and how you can tell a lot about a person by how they feel about Arrested Development.

Introduction

Backstage at San Francisco Opera is a fascinating, fast-moving, mysterious and sacred space for the Company’s singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and production crews. Musical and staging rehearsals are on-going, scenery is loaded in and taken out, lighting cues are set, costumes and wigs are moved around and everything is made ready to receive the audience. From the principal singers, chorus and orchestra musicians to the creative teams for each opera, in addition to the many talented folks who don’t take a bow on stage, this blog offers unique insight, both thought-provoking and light-hearted, into the life backstage at San Francisco Opera.